


maybe we'll find a brand new ending

by clow



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Drama, M/M, Post-Break Up, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 15:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10643103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clow/pseuds/clow
Summary: Chanyeol finds Kyungsoo sitting in his living room even though it's been half a year since they broke up. Except, it's not Kyungsoo.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **a/n** : warnings for mild angst, suicidal thoughts. 
> 
> Thank you to Line for betaing this. Original title was "love, love, love."  
> 

Kyungsoo was sat on the couch. It was late afternoon. He had earphones plugged in, and his nose was deep in a comic book. It was one of Chanyeol's favourites. The favourite volume of a favourite comic series, one that he had recommended to Kyungsoo since forever. 

Whatever forever meant. The corners of the pages were worn from usage. From the outdated concept people commonly called time. 

That was the first time Chanyeol saw this Kyungsoo. 

This Kyungsoo - Chanyeol preferred calling him D.O. - had the same glassy eyes, the same heart-like lips, the same voice, the same smell, the same dull sense of fashion, the same everything, even that half-exasperated look that he often had, ones that sometimes turned into a gentle smile if Chanyeol stared long enough. He was so much like Kyungsoo that Chanyeol thought he had been thrown back in time. Only, Chanyeol wasn't ever that lucky. He wasn't ever going to be the protagonist of a time machine story. He was just an ordinary student with ordinary things, like plain old time.

D.O. was hope and doom combined in one. Something like what ambrosia was to a mortal. Something like the danger zone at the edge of the platform, the exhilarating thrill when one dived head first into open air. 

Sometimes Chanyeol wasn't sure if the guy was Kyungsoo or D.O. 

Reality and memories bled into each other, and it only became harder and harder to tell them apart.

 

 

"What... are you doing here?" Chanyeol asked after maybe what seemed like half an hour of just staring, confused and lost. His voice was soft; he was afraid if he were any louder the image in front of him would dissipate into oblivion.

"I don't know," Kyungsoo said after taking off his earphones. He put down the comic book. "I've been meaning to read this for a while," he decided to say, his fingers lingering on its cover, slowly following the cursive font of the title.

"Because I recc'ed you it, you know, a long time ago," Chanyeol conjectured aloud. He looked at the ground, then up at Kyungsoo. "Did my mom let you in?" Chanyeol's mom had always been fond of Kyungsoo.

"No," Kyungsoo answered, offering nothing else. He seemed just as confused as Chanyeol.

"I can't imagine you doing something as romantic as climbing through the living room window, just to see me," Chanyeol tried saying something clever, only it wasn't, really, and it only left a strange kind of pain in his chest.

"I didn't, and you're right, I wouldn't," Kyungsoo responded, almost too bluntly. 

Chanyeol bit his lower lip. "Okay, but you gotta give me a hint. I can't read your mind. How did you get in? Yura would have killed you." He could imagine Yura slapping Kyungsoo and slamming the door on his face.

Kyungsoo looked away, as if he was about to say something shameful. "The spare key under the pot."

Chanyeol nodded. Of course. "Ah, right. Forgot about that." He scratched the back of his neck. "But that doesn't explain why you're here."

Kyungsoo kept quiet, kept his gaze low. They stayed that way for a while before Chanyeol snapped.

"I need you to leave," he said, voice belligerent, almost mean though it was tinted with pain. "You can't just walk back in here to read a fucking comic book. My fucking comic book. Well, you know what? I won't offer you coffee, or tea, or any form of hospitality," he breathed hard, almost panting, "get out."

Kyungsoo didn't stay a second more. He left, just like that, out the door. It shut behind him with an audible click. 

 

 

Click. Click. Click.

The second visit was late at night. Chanyeol was clicking through a game on an emulator on his desktop, trying to up his chances of soloing a raid boss by upgrading the runes of his stronger units, hoping nothing would break. He eyed the NPC really hard when she said, "Oupsie daisy - I guess that fickle gem just broke!" 

He had his headphones on and that was why he hadn't heard Kyungsoo.

"Shit!" Chanyeol had practically flipped his table when he noticed Kyungsoo standing next to him, staring at his screen, muted and expressionless, the way he always would be when he watched his friends gaming. Chanyeol stood up angrily, throwing off his headphones in a way Ross Geller would have. Over dramatically. 

"What. The. Fuck," Chanyeol hissed, for fear of waking his mom and sister. His hands were up in the air for emphasis. 

"Rune upgrade failing too many times in a row, I'm guessing?" Kyungsoo deadpanned. "Or did something break?"

Chanyeol widened his eyes. What?

"Sorry, I've never been too great at understanding games," Kyungsoo explained.

Chanyeol shook his head. "No, no, I mean, what the fuck, Kyungsoo?"

Kyungsoo bit his lower lip. "Uh. Um, surprise visit?" he offered.

Chanyeol blinked. "But you hate game nights?" Chanyeol shook his head. What was he talking about? That was not the point. 

"I didn't like them because I wasn't good at any," Kyungsoo said. "I still suck at them. But hey, maybe I could at least try."

"No, Kyungsoo, no, no no no no no. That's not my point--"

"But you just asked--"

"I meant to say, how and why the fuck are you here?" Chanyeol rephrased. He then looked at his digital clock on the other side of the room. The red numbers read three hours past midnight. Fucking third hour of the day. "It's 3AM, Jesus."

"Ungodly hour for a game, I have to say," Kyungsoo commented.

"Ungodly hour for an impromptu visit, you mean?" Chanyeol retorted. "You're not welcome here either, just in case you forgot that?"

Kyungsoo didn't say anything, but there was something like hurt in his eyes. Something similar but not entirely the same. Chanyeol exhaled. It helped with calming his nerves sometimes, but this was not one of those times. He closed his eyes, squeezed tight. He heard a door open and close. He opened his eyes, and Kyungsoo was gone. 

 

 

The third time was not going to happen, Chanyeol told himself. Chanyeol also told himself every morning ever since that night, that he had to go and take the key from under the pot and confiscate it, so to speak. But every time he had finished his morning routine and was heading out to work, he either forgot or decided not to take it.

Whenever he decided not to, he would end up wasting his whole day doing nothing productive. He would just daydream, wondering why he hadn't taken the key.

 

 

If he had to say what he missed the most about Kyungsoo it would be the soft and long kisses, the ones that made his knees give in, that made him weak in the gut but spiritually strong. 

But then, it was like missing all the non-existent I-love-you's he wanted to hear from Kyungsoo. 

It hurt just thinking about them. Chanyeol should really get over them, the kisses and the I-love-you's. They didn't hurt in any sort of good way. 

Chanyeol wanted to sink his own head into the water-filled sink and stay there in the dark washroom, trying hard to forget. Whether it was to forget how to breathe or to forget Kyungsoo it didn't matter anymore. Either or. It was fine.

Except it wasn't like either would ever happen. He never quite liked water. He would just come up again and gasp for good old air.

 

 

The third time was at a bookstore. The Kyungsoo Chanyeol knew never really liked bookstores. Kyungsoo hardly ever went to one... but he was standing there, reading a book. He seemed so out of place. This time it was not a comic book though, it was some sort of textbook on the theory of objectivity. He did not seem to have noticed Chanyeol even though the tall guy was sticking out like a sore thumb and the shop was relatively uncrowded.

Chanyeol decided not to approach him. He quickly paid for his monthly magazine and left with only the sound of wooden wind chimes dangling at the door.

 

 

The fourth time was in his own bed.

 

 

Chanyeol woke up and Kyungsoo was curled up, sleeping next time, facing him. It was so unreal. 

Kyungsoo never slept facing Chanyeol, at least, not in a long time.

His face was serene, gentle, almost innocent, almost ignorant, almost ridiculously unsuspecting.

Chanyeol didn't understand. He was trying to put two and two together in his brain but he didn't have any twos and he didn't have any conclusion; he didn't have a fucking clue either.

Kyungsoo couldn't just walk in like this, walk back into his life like it had only been a matter of reversing time, only a matter of doing what Chanyeol had always wanted him to do. Out of spite-- no, it was out of something Chanyeol couldn't quite word -- he shoved Kyungsoo off the bed. The other woke with a small yelp, but before he could get up, Chanyeol stormed out of his own bedroom, slamming the door even though it was harder to do so since the door was being slammed from outside the room.

 

 

Kisses went a little like this. Chanyeol would press his lips against Kyungsoo's and they would push and push, their noses bumping, always in the way. Their hands would be somewhere on the other's neck, hair, cheeks. Their eyes would be closed for added effect. Added effect equating to an exhilarating adrenaline similar to the feeling one would get from looking up at a quiet yet very starry night sky.

 

 

Chanyeol called this Kyungsoo D.O., firstly because he wanted to differentiate between the two entities. Secondly, he wanted something that sounded respectful. D.O. sounded like a prayer if one said it soft enough. Chanyeol had learned that the Spanish word for god was something similar to it, maybe one letter sound off, but close. Chanyeol did not necessarily believe in god, but it did the thing. 

D.O., it was like a secret chord that only god could hear.

 

 

It took Chanyeol five times to realise that D.O. was not Kyungsoo.

 

 

Or five point five times, but he liked to round down numbers.

 

 

The fifth time was when Chanyeol was smoking outside on the balcony. The cold night breeze had not bothered him. Sometimes he wondered if he wanted the fresh air or the poisonous smoulder whenever he stepped out on his balcony. He looked at his pack of cigs and wondered if quitting would be hard.

Who was he kidding.

He exhaled the smoke slowly through his mouth, and when it dissipated, he saw Kyungsoo sitting at the edge of the sidewalk, his back to Chanyeol.

Chanyeol didn't call out. His heart just stopped altogether and he did not know how to reboot it. All he could do was blame it all on the smoke, blame it all on a bad night of failed rune upgrades and toothpick damage on raid bosses and losing his top 10 PVP rank and E luck yolo rolls, on him being a wuss and a loser who couldn't get over something as measly as a breakup.

 

 

The next morning, he did not forget to check under the pot. Ha, he thought when he was reaching for it. This would put an end to everything. The potted plant was lifted from its spot of half sunshine half shadow.

Only, there was no key.

For the whole day Chanyeol felt uneasy. Surely Kyungsoo was not the type to just steal the key. Surely Chanyeol hadn't dated someone that creepy.

But when he came back home from work he checked again and yeah, the key still wasn't there.

 

 

Kyungsoo was the one who had crossed the line between childhood friend and best friend forever. He was also the one who had crossed the more dangerous line between bff and boyfriends. 

He was the one who leaned in and kissed Chanyeol that night after the graduation ceremony. Chanyeol could remember vividly how Kyungsoo's mortarboard fell off his head when he had flung himself on Chanyeol, telling him, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm--," after one of the best kisses of Chanyeol's otherwise ordinary life.

 

 

It hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt, Chanyeol wanted to scream.

 

 

 

Five point five. 

"Mom, I just want you to know that the backup key's gone."

"What backup key?"

"The one under the pot?"

His mom eyed him curiously. "Chanyeol, I gave that backup key to uncle Joonmyeon, remember? About half a year ago?"

 

 

Chanyeol practically summoned the sixth time.

Chanyeol had him pinned down to the wooden tile floor of his bedroom. D.O. didn't struggle, didn't try to escape, but he was breathing hard, like an animal that knew it was trapped and knew it had no chances of escaping.

"Who are you," Chanyeol practically growled. He raised a fist threateningly. D.O.'s eyes followed it. 

"Whoever you want me to be," D.O. answered. They stayed still and silent for a while. The tension was almost tangible.

Chanyeol didn't loosen his grip. D.O.'s reply was far from anything he wanted as an answer. It was not even remotely close.

"Stop talking to me in riddles," Chanyeol said.

D.O. did not look at Chanyeol. He kept his eyes on the fist. He then closed them. "I'm..."

Chanyeol waited it out as patiently as he could.

"A figment of your imagination," D.O. finished. "I think that's what you could call me. But I rather think of myself as the embodiment of your love for Kyungsoo. It's nicer. It's heart-warming, even though I probably don't have a heart of my own."

It took all the willpower for Chanyeol to stay still and take it all in. Masticate, ruminate and digest every little word D.O. had just said. Before he knew it, he started shedding silent tears. They fell on D.O's face, and D.O. looked away, guilty and apologetic.

But after a whole minute of this intense feeling of nostalgia and anger mixed with confusion, Chanyeol couldn't keep it in anymore. He let go, grabbed chunks of his hair and screamed as hard as he could.

 

 

No one could see D.O.

Only Chanyeol could. 

It made sense, D.O. was a figment of his imagination after all. 

 

 

D.O. visited him, and since Chanyeol did not want to explain to anyone again about why he had screamed the other day ("No I swear it was a fucking huge spider don't pretend you aren't scared of spiders Park Yura") he didn't cause any other uproar about D.O.'s subsequent visits.

 

Chanyeol pretended to get used to the visits.

"I like this comic artist's style. Love how he plays with the thickness of his lines. I once heard that the secret to drawing is in sketching C's and S's. I think I can actually see it in his style. Here, see? An S… a C, and S and another S."

It was a secret that Chanyeol knew. It wasn't anything new. In fact, it was actually _his_ opinion about the artist's style. But at this point he could only agree and nod, not paying too much attention. D.O. smiled briefly.

"I'm trying to make this work," D.O. said, a little too earnestly, the way that would usually get to Chanyeol even if he were zero percent wrong. Minus a hundred percent wrong.

Chanyeol shrugged it off, patted D.O. on the back, but D.O.'s words were already affecting him. Clawing at him, digging deep to touch a sensitive spot.

"Why do I need you?" Chanyeol murmured, later that same night.

D.O. looked away, out the window. "Because I could have been the one, yet I left." His words were whispered, but they were like droplets of acid to Chanyeol.

 

 

Friday was a game night, and D.O. stayed over. Chanyeol double clicked on the emulator and opened up Discord and Twitch, seeing if anyone had put up a strategy for the current event boss. D.O. just sat next to him, watching him work and coordinate attacks with his guild mates. DPS was the way to go. Build your units with atk-atk-crit. Bring all the def debuffers in the first wave, and then burst, burst, burst. D.O. was learning these terms slowly. Surely, given he was in fact just a projection of what Chanyeol knows already, he knew the lingo, but still he tried learning them, pretended he didn't know, in order to keep in character.

"HP becomes invaluable with def buffs," Chanyeol spoke into his mic, talking to a newbie who had just joined the guild and rolled a tanky unit with a def up passive, and wasn't sure if that was so great.

D.O. rested his head on Chanyeol's shoulder. "It's better than HP boost passive on a tank?" he asked casually.

"Definitely, as long as the active doesn't rely on higher max HP," Chanyeol answered without thinking. "Not that the unit would be bad because of a def up passive. It depends on its role in your team anyways."

"I like the design to that unit," Kyungsoo pointed at the screen.

"Yeah," Chanyeol breathed deeply. "Me, too."

D.O. - not Kyungsoo - was pointing at the screen, Chanyeol corrected himself. He closed his eyes.

 

 

"Did I see you at the bookstore, you know, a couple of weeks ago?" Chanyeol asked one day.

D.O. looked at him wordlessly, eyes misty.

Chanyeol did not know if he really wanted to know. 

"Are there places where... you can't possibly appear?"

 

 

D.O. brought Chanyeol to the bookstore. But he didn't go in.

"I can't be somewhere you've never seen me in before."

D.O. pointed at the bookstore for emphasis. "You've never seen me in there before, not before a couple of weeks ago, not before you saw Kyungsoo. So before that day, you couldn't have possibly seen me. But if I step in right now, you'd be able to see me."

Chanyeol mulled over this but soon forgot after D.O. stepped in and looked at the New Arrivals section. 

 

 

"I can touch you. How is it that I can touch an illusion?" They were sat on Chanyeol's bed.

"Illusions can really mess with you," Kyungsoo said, almost cheekily. 

"I was convinced it was the other way around," Chanyeol replied. 

 

 

"Okay, but if you're the embodiment of my love for Kyungsoo, then like, if I kissed you what would happen?"

"It'll be a memory you don't want to remember," D.O. answered softly. "Nothing else."

 

 

He kissed D.O. anyways. Long and soft, just like he remembered. D.O. breathed hard. Their hands were all over the place. Chanyeol sunk his nose into the nook of the other's neck. He breathed and breathed and remembered Kyungsoo's lavender laundry detergent and lemongrass shampoo.

D.O. pushed Chanyeol off abruptly, his face completely flushed (but with embarrassment or anger, Chanyeol couldn't tell) and ran out of the room like a bat out of hell, like a fish out of water, like a gamer who'd suddenly lost his game.

 

 

"What if I fell in love with you, D.O.?" Chanyeol asked.

"I'd be your doom," D.O. said.

They stayed quiet for a while.

"Promise me you won't fall in love with me," D.O. whispered, so softly Chanyeol almost missed it. 

 

 

D.O. didn't visit for a while after that. Chanyeol did not know if it was for the better. What he did know was that Do fucking Kyungsoo left him twice now, and it hurt like a bitch. It didn't matter if one of them was a figment of imagination or not. It just didn't matter anymore.

 

 

It took months to recover. Chanyeol had gotten some therapy. He did not feel like he was recovering though. He was just getting better at lying to himself.

 

 

If D.O. was gone, did that mean his love for Kyungsoo was also gone? Because that would be great. He would love that. He would really love that. He could go back to being an ordinary guy living an ordinary life without having a care in the world about fancy concepts like love and time and forever.

 

 

D.O. had only taken a "break" away. He hadn't been gone completely. But this time he was back to say goodbye.

Chanyeol was smoking on the balcony and D.O. was suddenly right below it. It would have been romantic if D.O. weren't a figment of Chanyeol's imagination.

"D.O.?"

"Yeah."

Chanyeol inhaled and then exhaled, slow and steady, his eyes resting on D.O. with sombre indifference.

"You've been gone like, what? Six months? I thought you were gone for sure. Well, you wouldn't have been out of character," Chanyeol said, trying to sound nonchalant.

"I don't have a will of my own," D.O. replied flatly.

Chanyeol quirked his eyebrow.

"I only appear when you want me to, and I can't just stay away even if I wanted to," D.O. said. "Although yes, I did try hard to stay away."

Chanyeol laughed bitterly. "Am I that horrible to be with? What did Kyungsoo say back then… that my love was, hmm, too smothering? Is that what you think too? Because that's fine. Really." He tapped his cig against the railing. 

"No, Chanyeol," D.O. said. "Your love is too smothering for yourself, Chanyeol, not for Kyungsoo."

The smoker narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"I am your love. I personify it, whatever you call this," D.O. said, hands motioning at himself. "I think I'm not healthy for you. You know I'm not healthy for you."

Chanyeol inhaled sharply.

"I love you too, you know," D.O. murmured.

"But you're just," Chanyeol started. "But you're… just saying what I want to hear the real Kyungsoo say."

"Exactly," D.O. said. "I don't have a will of my own. I'm not my own being, even if I were convinced that I am in love with you."

"This is so fucked up," Chanyeol said, after a long pause.

D.O. sighed. "Yeah. It was nice meeting you. I love you… a lot. I personally think Kyungsoo did too. But my personal thoughts probably don't mean anything."

"You're out of character," Chanyeol said.

"This'll be the only time it happens," D.O. said before he stepped off the pavement. "But who am I kidding? Anyway, goodbye, Chanyeol."

And he left for good.

 

 

 

Chanyeol lived a little better after that. He didn't feel so strung up or upset despite that being one of the saddest goodbyes he'd ever heard. 

Somehow, he felt strangely relieved. The cliché was that the weight was lifted from his shoulders. He was able to move on in life. He dedicated less and less time on binge gaming in the middle of the night, so he could sleep more and better. He would put a little more effort every day into work, and help his mom around with her garden, or help Yura with her work. He would spend some time with his friends (Baekhyun and Jongdae), and they would hang around at least once every week, grab a beer and talk about old times. He even quit smoking. 

Chanyeol was back to reality, back on the map. And everything was falling back into place, piece by piece.

 

 

One day, months after D.O., an idea struck him. 

Not an idea per se, more like some sort of force that he could not understand, pushing him to just get up and _go_. He wasn't sure if it was a sign of any of his feelings for Kyungsoo re-emerging from dead waters, or something else altogether, but he had a rather good feeling about it. He just went with the flow.

 

 

He stood up. He was at work but he didn't… really _care_. He grabbed his jacket that was on the back of his chair, he closed the lid of his laptop and was about to grab his bag but he thought "really?" and just left without doing anything else, without minding all the heads that turned to him, without caring about all the "where are you going"s from his colleagues and superiors.

"Where are you going?" Even life started asking him questions.

He was running down the busy streets, wading through the crowd like he was swimming in a swamp. He didn't mind. The harder he pushed the more real this whole _idea_ felt.

He ran harder and harder until he reached the bookstore.

 

 

The bookstore where he had last seen Kyungsoo. The one where D.O. had stood, hesitating, helpless, afraid, before he had stepped in.

And Kyungsoo was there.

 

 

There he was. Standing close to the windows, in a light jacket, with his perfect hair wavy and black. He was standing close enough for Chanyeol to see him, close enough for Chanyeol to see him reading Chanyeol's favourite comic book.

 

His favourite volume of his favourite comic series, the one that he had recommended to Kyungsoo since forever.

**Author's Note:**

> ugh


End file.
